Twitter is on a meteoric rise. In 2007 folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day; 300,000 times a day in 2008; 2.5 million per day in 2009 and now it’s 50 million tweets per day. This month the whole shebang crossed the 10 billion tweet milestone.

Which of your eyes would sell for a growth chart like this?

But dissenters say that folks don’t stay involved. That 60% of people who sign up, get bored within weeks and don’t return. That the noise from the few is deafening and that the many just listen and regurgitate. They’d say (ironically, probably via a blog) that it’s all a narcissistic fad.

Businesses are looking at Dell as the poster child of Twitter use and think they can all show offers in 140 characters that convert highly. But the fact is transactional sites get less than 10% of Twitter’s exit links, the majority goes to other content driven sites (social media). Others take a more puritan stance and think it’s the conversation – engagement – that wins in the end.

Personally, I’m likening the whole thing to cricket. Is there a more polarising game in existence?

Chances are if you like cricket, you’ll love cricket. You’ll want to skive off work and sit for hours watching what many would call ‘nothing much.’ You might even want to drop your fabulous music career for cricket commentary (Lily Allen does). The non-believers would laugh at you and say the whole thing is a waste of good grass.

Understanding and liking Twitter is every bit as binary. You either do, or you don’t.

But the one marketing area that unquestionably lends itself well to Twitter is sport. Take Lance Armstrong. Lance is the Stephen Fry of tweeting sports personalities and his build-up and insight to the Tour de France will be fascinating.

F1 newbie, Lotus are also on the guerrilla marketing bandwagon, allowing chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne and others to give us real time access to their thoughts. During the Bahrain GP he actually told us that Jarno Trulli was pitting on the next lap. In the ultra-competitive and secretive world of F1 racing that level of engagement with outsiders (fans and rivals, obviously) is astounding. I’d argue that it’s to the benefit of the Lotus brand – to its share of mindset, to its growth, to its media coverage (as others write about it) and to its value as we get closer to the heart of Lotus as an organisation and build a relationship.

What about you and your organisation? Will you be donning your digital cricket whites this summer or would that be a time-wasting bore?

Read a great article over on Inc. about Nick Sarillo and his pizza restaurants.

It tells about his unorthodox hiring process, about his talent development and his $200k consultant’s bill. But essentially, it’s about his business’s culture.

Culture is surely one of the most intangible aspects of business and as such can be the most frustrating. The culture can all too easily be clockwatching and pilfering in an entrenched oligopoly, but if you’re looking to push scale or improve net profits then you’ll find it almost impossible without the correct culture – whatever that is.

Culture in a company dictates whether you follow a 50,00 word business plan religiously or you hand the bank manager a one page outline of your ideas and put your best foot forward. Fred Goodwin’s culture of ‘win at all costs’ crippled RBS and Dick Fuld’s sent Lehman off the cliff. Culture is what Scorsese and Spielberg embody in their actors before letting them navigate a scene.

Isn’t this all really HR’s job? Well, I’m afraid I see too many organisations with HR departments that seem to treat their jobs in two facets: personnel operations coupled with a fear (and avoidance) of legal proceedings. Do you know many HR folk who treat their fellow employees like those at Nick’s Pizza & Pub? I’m sure you know more who would say that it’s not their remit, that line managers and supervisors should push those boundaries, not HR.

In an entrepreneurial business like Nick’s the form filling takes a distant second place to structure, satisfaction, autonomy and development. If your culture’s right then surely the marketing becomes the story of that result?

Image from Inc article here.

I used to work for someone who claimed proudly that he knew almost nothing about our product and he certainly wouldn’t use our products. He would even speak derogatorily of those who did. With pride he’d say, “I’m a businessman, I don’t need to know about a product to sell it.”

Of course there’s quite a parcel of truth in his arrogance: your estate agent didn’t live in your house before you bought it and Dr John Davis doesn’t really know what childbirth is like. But we all want our salespeople to be empathetic, don’t we? We demand advice and expertise and the only real way of gaining that is through experience.

Just how our teams communicate that to customers is as much a marketing issue as website copy or advertising budgets. And it might be worth reminding them that ‘do what I say, not what I do’ is even more unpalatable now than it was as a child. Would you take health advice from an obese, alcoholic, chain-smoker?

I was asked this week, ‘What does a manager really do?’ It was a fairly innocuous, rhetorical, jovial question from a well-paid, senior person.

The graduate switch flicked and I immediately thought, ‘seeing that the company’s goals are met’. After all, it’s the leader’s job to define and create those goals and aims, and it’s management’s job to realise them. Right?

But managing people is rarely a squeaky clean affair. I’m not a huge supporter of lofty job titles as they can often cause internal problems, but anyone claiming to be a ‘Manager’ will find themselves wearing several hats (in no particular order):

• go between
• consultant (to those above and below)
• amateur psychologist
• negotiator
• dispute resolver
• idea instigator
• organiser
• governor
• role model
• decision maker (the buck stops and all that)
• communications expert (surely THE key to management)
• soldier (ever metaphorically fallen on your sword?)
• captain
• big brother/sister (you need to eat more, drink less, curb spending)
• counsellor
• teacher
• steward
• servant
• policy pursuer
• change agent
• supporter (of others, of the different viewpoint – perhaps the weaker voice)
• challenger (of the status quo)

It strikes me that a manager who only wants to manage isn’t anywhere near up to the job. The seven-letter title is low-balling the variety of commitment needed in all but the safest of environments.

Most business leaders don’t need a poll or a study to arrive at the conclusion that managers are the largest reason for staff resignations, but the news this week sends us straight there.

Of course direct departure isn’t the only symptom of poor management. Professor Mike Kelly, director of public health, NICE said to the BBC that more than 13 million working days a year are lost because of work related stress, anxiety and depression.

How much of that is directly attributable to managers and bosses is pretty impossible to pin down, but haven’t we got to admit there’s likely to be an element of cause and effect there?

Photo: one of the UK’s most feared managers, Sir Alex Ferguson (image from Wikipedia)

The show, I’m running Sainsbury’s teaches retailers a valuable lesson. Several in fact: it was a great marketing ploy, a very good HR tactic, and it also showed the value of failing.

In seeking new ideas, Sainsbury’s Chief Exec., Justin King (see right), canvassed his entire team for the next big idea – that’s 150,000+ employees. We didn’t get to see how many reached final consideration, but the few Ch4 followed contained failures.

You got the impression from the Sainsbury’s big wigs that this was all part of their proficient DNA. Consider, canvass opinion, prototype, test, roll out slowly, emergency stop if necessary. Understandably, the smallest percentage of ‘big ideas’ mature through this process.

The Kings, Sugars and Bransons of the world would say failure is a necessary evil in businesses big and small. If you launch ten projects then it’s extremely unlikely that all ten will float along successfully. Therefore, for the realists, it becomes a question of how quickly you appreciate it’s a lost cause and just what you do about it.

Michael Jordan said: I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why… I succeed.

It’s the time of year when schools christen students with some work experience by sending them out to organisations to be blooded with genuine toil.

I vividly remember donning a snazzy tie and Hush Puppies and turning up for my fortnight’s work experience at a high street bank. They were great. No floor polishing or coffee making for me: I sorted the personal cheques (remember them?), I printed statements, I opened mail and weighed coins. They even gave me the code for the door so I could get back in from lunch!

But thinking about this also brought back memories of the cheery store manager. He was a large character that would be right at home holding forth in the golf club bar. On day one, I thought he was a nice chap.

Then I saw him grab one of the female teller’s backsides as she walked past him. Between repeating this on several prey and dishing out overly long hugs that had women craning their necks away from his leer, I soon changed my mind.

Sexist rubbish in the workplace has come a long way in twenty odd years but a business forum I recently attended tells me it’s not come far enough.

The opening speaker was littered with innuendo and lewd comments. Granted, there was a sporting slant to the day (Joe Lydon’s coaching talk was excellent) but the title of the event was ‘High Performance Society,’ not ‘Bar Room Tales of Totty.’ Three of the seven seats at my table complained; two left early asking for their money back.

We’ve still got further to go gents. Much further. Even your work experience student can probably point that out to you.

Photo: one of my favourite business women, Mary Portas

I’ve just caught up with my Sky+ recordings of Channel 4’s Big Chef Takes on Little Chef, where Heston Blumenthal worked on a revamp of the Little Chef restaurants (I know it finished weeks ago, but I’ve been busy, OK).

The project finished successfully with the flagship Popham restaurant being rolled out nationwide, but the classic, and avoidable, failure was in communication. It became an example of how not to introduce change into a business.

These two aren’t natural bedfellows: Heston’s not a chef, he’s more of a food scientist, and Little Chef isn’t known for its quality of late. What did the two sides want out of the project? What was their motivation? What was the bigger picture for both?

The management rhetoric flowed from LC’s managing director, Ian Pegler, “I want blue sky thinking,” “show us the wow factor…” All of course are completely subjective and make it very easy to dismiss results as falling short. I appreciate he didn’t want to stifle Heston’s creativity, but he seemed desperate to avoid clarity at all costs – no aims, no objectives. This put them at loggerheads several times with Heston very nearly withdrawing.

I think they could’ve made life easier for all involved by targeting ‘Mondeo man.’ He (to continue the sexist noun) travels the country from meeting to meeting and despises the overpriced junk in Motorway stops. He spends £6 on coffee and a croissant rather than eat the drivel they serve in the café.

When Mr and Mrs Mondeo are too shattered to cook, where does the family go to eat? Harvester, Taybarns, McDonalds? Possibly. Little chef? Certainly not.

That’s where I’d have calibrated our positioning and targeting efforts from the beginning: business travellers for breakfast and lunch, families for dinner (remembering that breakfast is the cash cow for this chain).

They should’ve spent more time talking to each other, not the cameras. They operate at polar opposites of the food industry: one in a pub where dinner costs £250 per head, the other behind the desk of 400 Little Chefs. Change like this demands both parties really understand all view points of the project.

Photo credit: Wolfiewolf

At first, ‘How did we do?’ sounds like a question designed around self-improvement, right? Wrong. It’s usually a worthless platitude on par with a client/supplier asking, ‘How are you?’ They don’t care that you had toothache or a head cold last month and that your fridge packed up last night.

The overriding majority of people who’ll ask ‘How did I do?’ or ‘What do you think of my new widget’ already have a strong opinion before they ask, and are unlikely to be open enough to have you or others change it. The course has been set, the training is done, people have been hired, the script is written, the ads are booked, the product is in play – don’t make me change all that.

Next time you’re asked, ask them what they do with the feedback? If the project manager was outstanding does he/she get that fed into their appraisal system? Perhaps they qualify for a bonus? If the sales training was a dire waste of time, will the course be changed? Bottom line: will the feedback be actionable or are we just making polite platitudes?

If I’m fortunate enough to receive your feedback I’ll want your unfaltering honest opinions, not some lame schmoozing which equates to a lie. And ‘good’ or ‘nice’ do me no favours either because they don’t help me change and improve what I’m doing – they cry for more of the same (which doesn’t take me forward).

I’ll take the whole truth please. How about you and your team?

Photo credit: Gaetan Lee

A business is an organic entity. Most stakeholders would wish their company to ‘grow’ but it can be ‘starved’ of orders, ‘bleed’ cash and ‘haemorrhage’ profits. Yet the biggest indicator of its living matter is the fact that people make a company (well, certainly the vast majority). The attitude of staff is the telling piece here and you’ll not find a more obvious example than Gordon Ramsay.

Look beyond the ‘shocking’ persona and you see a caring and driven business leader who believes in hard work across the board. He has a huge tribe of followers and all those who work with him seem to sign up. Sound like a bullying waster to you?

His latest show from the States is currently airing and is, as usual, over-edited thanks to Channel 4, but Ramsay’s work is excellent. No, he’s not facing challenges on the scale of a motor industry bailout, but he does cut to the heart of the problems and offers simple solutions that he proves can work – usually by making their lives simpler.

A regular SME superman. Perhaps it’s time Jose Mourinho passed on his Special One mantle?

This show is a business must: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is on Channel 4 tonight at 9:00pm.
Photo courtesy of: jo-h